ON SHIPLEY BRIDGE
The subconscious work of grievances and the secret attrition of their
fret are dangerous. Margery Bullstone harboured such an ill, and it
had wrought inevitable modification of character, for sense of
personal wrong, if indulged, must mar quality. She was barely
conscious of this buffet, and when she thought upon her life, assured
herself that its compensations and disillusions were fairly balanced,
for she loved her husband and tried to keep his fine characteristics
uppermost in her mind; but she liked him less than of old and her
grievance appeared in this: that he hindered her and came between her
and many innocent pleasures which would have made her life fuller and
happier. She did not understand Jacob save in flashes, and was dimly
aware of perils in his nature and chambers, hidden in his heart,
which held danger. He told her often that he held no secrets from
her, and perhaps he believed it. Regarding temporal matters--his
success or failure, his money, his possessions, his plans--it was
emphatically true. He liked her to know how he stood, to share his
hopes, to sympathise in his disappointments. But this was not all,
and Margery knew that in the far deeper secrets of character and
conviction, she had not entered the depth of her husband's mind and
never would. He was a warm-hearted man and yet, under the warmth,
flowed currents hidden from every eye. Sometimes, more by accident
than intention, she had dipped for a moment into these currents, been
chilled and found herself glad to ascend into the temperate region of
their usual communion. She knew he was jealous, yet he seldom said a
word to prove it. But she understood him well enough to read his
silences and they were unspeakably pregnant. They would sometimes
last for several days and frighten her. She had known bitter weeks
when Jacob addressed no living thing but the dogs. Then the darkness
would drift off and his steadfast and not uncheerful self shine out.
Sometimes she was able to discover a reason for such eclipse;
sometimes, puzzle as she might, no cause occurred to her mind. If
she approached him, expressed grief for his tribulation and prayed to
share it, he would put her off. Then she felt the cause, if not the
fault, was in herself.
"If you don't know the reason, then no doubt there's no reason," was
a cryptic answer he often made, and it left her dumb. She was
conscious of a strange sense that somebody beside her husband dwelt
unseen at Red House--somebody who watched and noted, but made no
comment. The unseen expressed neither pleasure nor displeasure, but
concentrated upon her and chronicled her actions and opinions. Jacob
seemed to be two personalities, the one obvious, trustworthy,
affectionate, the other inscrutable, attentive, vigilant. If one
Jacob praised her and seemed to come closer, so that she felt happy,
then arose the consciousness of the other Jacob, concerning whom she
knew so little, and whose attitude to herself she could not feel was
friendly. Had she been able to put a name to it, or analyse her
husband's second self, she might have felt easier in some directions;
but as yet she had failed to understand. Nor could anybody help her
to do so. Perhaps Judith Huxam came nearest to explaining the
obscurity. But she refused to give it a name, though her suspicion
found vent in cautions to Margery.
Jacob was not secretive in many things, and a habit of his, quite
familiar to his wife, might have helped towards elucidation had she
been of a synthetic bent. He would sometimes himself harbour
grievances for days and then plump out with them. They were
generally of a trivial appearance in Margery's eyes, and she often
wondered at the difference between the things that annoyed a woman
and perturbed a man. He was obstinate and had his own way as a
matter of course. She never opposed him, and where alternatives of
action presented themselves, Jacob decided; but some things happened
that she felt were a permanent bruise to him. They grew out of life
and struck the man in his tenderest part. None was responsible for
them and they rose from material as subtle and intangible as heredity
and character. Margery granted that they were very real facts and
would have altered them for her husband's sake had it been possible
to do so; but to alter them was not possible, for they rooted in the
souls of the four children now swiftly growing up at Red House.
Jacob was a good father, and coming to paternity when already
advanced in manhood, he had devoted more personal time and attention
to his children, their nurture and formation of character, than a
younger parent might have done. From the first Margery perceived
that the upbringing of her brood would lie in the will of their
father; and since she had cared for him better and glorified him mere
during the years when they were born than now, she had not differed
from his opinions, even when sometimes prompted from her parents'
home to do so. But chance, as though conscious of Jacob's jealousy
and his overmastering desire to dominate by love of his children and
his wife, had flouted this passion and denied him love.
At first the case centred with Margery herself, and while his boys
and girls were little children, he had almost resented the abundant
worship they bestowed upon her rather than him; but now the situation
had developed, though they were still too young to hide their
predilections. Nor did they turn to their father, as he expected the
boys at least to do. They had declared frank affection where least
he expected it. Their mother was indeed first, and then came in
their regard not Jacob, but their grandparents; and he found to his
surprise that the Huxams attracted his sons and eldest daughter. It
puzzled him, even angered him; but he rarely exhibited his secret
annoyance and never to any but Margery.
He was scornful to her occasionally and she admitted, or professed, a
kindred astonishment. Indeed she did not know why the boys had not
naturally turned to their father, since there existed no reason in
his treatment of them to lessen natural affection. He was kind and
generous. He supported their youthful hopes and ambitions; he went
further in that direction than Margery herself; for she had desired
higher education for John Henry and Peter, while their father, to her
disappointment, held it worthless, seeing the nature of their hopes
and abilities. In a year or two both would be free to leave the
secondary school at which they studied, and Jacob held that his
eldest son must then take up practical farming under experienced
tuition, while Peter was to join a veterinary surgeon for a time,
then come back to Red House and the Irish terriers. His decisions
troubled Margery and seemed, in her mind, a slight to her sons. For
Jacob had been himself well educated and knew the value of learning.
Thus husband and wife developed points of difference at this stage of
their united lives, though they lived placidly on the surface and
were exemplars of what marriage should be in the eyes of their
neighbours. The invisible friction was concealed and all ran
smoothly in general opinion.
Jacob Bullstone was exacting in trifles, and Margery, while she had
waived certain pleasures that meant much to her in her early married
days, always hoped to gratify them when her children were grown out
of babyhood and life still beckoned. Now, in sight of their crucial
years together, it was too late, and having from the first fallen in
with her husband's solitary mode of life, she found it had become
impossible to make him more gregarious and sociable. She loved her
fellow-creatures and companionship; he preferred loneliness and found
the company of his family more than sufficient. She was ambitious to
entertain a little and loved to see friends at Red House, or visit
them; he cared not for hospitality and could seldom be prevailed upon
either to accept it, or offer it. He was always craving for peace,
while she found so much solitude to be melancholy, and often sighed
for distraction. She was but thirty-four and her cheerful nature and
ready sympathy made her popular. He was fifty and regarded the life
he liked as more dignified and worthy of respect, excusing his hermit
instinct in this manner. She loved to talk of her own and praise her
children in the ears of other mothers. He deprecated this desire
strongly and was morbidly sensitive about praising anything that
belonged to him. At the same time he would grow silent if others
took his own cue, or ventured to criticise unfavourably so much as a
dog that he esteemed.
Margery concentrated on Jacob's goodness, for she knew that he was
good; and at moments of depression, when life looked more grey than
usual and its promise but bleak, after her children should be gone,
she would remember many incidents to her husband's credit. He was
very patient; he worked hard; he helped many a lame dog over a stile;
he forgave wrongs; he was slow to think evil. He failed as a judge
of character, which was natural in a man of his temperament; but his
disappointments bred neither irony nor bitterness. She believed that
he thought well of human nature, so long as it did not intrude too
much upon his privacy; and she perceived that he took men at their
own valuation until they proved that he was wrong to do so.
There was one golden link, and sometimes Margery confessed to her
father, though not to her mother, that Auna, the baby of the family,
held all together and might be called the little saviour of the
situation and the central fact of the home. She was physically her
mother again--more like Margery when eighteen, than Margery herself
now was. She had her mother's eyes and hair, her long, slim legs,
her sudden laugh. She was an attractive child, but very shy with
strangers. Yet her good nature made her fight this instinct and she
pleased better in her gentle way than her more boisterous sister.
Her brothers made Avis their heroine, since she could do all they
could themselves and play boys' games; but Auna found this no sorrow.
Her father was supreme in her affections and his own regard for her
echoed her adoration.
He made no favourites openly, yet the situation could not be hidden
and none was jealous of Auna, since none ever had any ground for
grievance. His regard for Auna surpassed that for the others, and
she loved him far better than they did. Margery would not quarrel
with the fact, and Jacob explained it in a manner which left her no
cause for complaint.
"It's natural that, after you, she should come first with me," he
told his wife privately--indeed he often repeated the sentiment.
"She's you over again--you, to every trick and turn--you, even to the
tiny fraction your right eyebrow's higher than your left. In body
she's you, and in mind she'll be you and me rolled into one. And she
loves me more than the others all put together, just as you love me
more than they do. So never wonder; and never fear I'll do less than
my whole duty to every child of mine."
She never did fear that and was only sorry for him, that life had
drawn this difference. With such a man it was inevitable that he
would react fiercely in heart, though not out of reason. He was
sensitive and knew himself not popular; and when he confessed as much
and she told him that the fault was his own, since he would not court
his neighbours and give them opportunity to learn his worth, he would
laugh and say she was doubtless right. Yet, of the few friends that
he had, he was very jealous, and when a man offered friendship and
presently cooled off, as sometimes happened, by accident rather than
intent, Jacob suffered secretly and puzzled himself to invent
explanations, when often enough the other, pressed by a harder life
than his own, had merely let him slip a little from force of
circumstances, yet still imagined him a friend.
Margery regretted her mother-in-law very heartily, for she had been a
valued factor in the home and acted as anodyne of trouble on many
occasions. She had taught her son's wife some precious truths
concerning Jacob and made her feet firm in certain particulars. She
had won the affection of her grandchildren also and she always
possessed an art to satisfy Jacob himself. But she was gone and with
her much that Margery had only dimly appreciated, but now missed.
The wife also tended to forget a point or two that had been wiselier
remembered.
Jacob broke out sometimes and said things that must have caused
Margery uneasiness, had she not assumed their insignificance. What
he spoke in rare fits of anger was always of the surface and
unimportant to Margery, yet in another ear, if any had heard him,
these speeches might have sounded ominous. Galled sometimes by
thoughtlessness in his sons, or at an answer lacking in respect, he
would roar harmlessly and even threaten. She had heard him say that,
since Auna was the only one who cared a straw for his opinions, and
valued his fatherhood in her, she should be the only one he should
remember. But these things were summer thunder and lightning to his
wife. Whatever his offspring might do, short of open wrong, would
never influence Jacob. What was hidden she regarded, indeed,
fearfully for its mystery; but that it would ever rise into
injustice, folly, madness she denied. He was a man too forthright
and fixed in honour and justice to wrong any fellow-creature.
And this she felt despite difference in religious opinion. She had
never probed this matter, but was aware that Jacob did not share the
convictions she had won in her home. He seldom went to church and
seldom, indeed, discussed religion at all; but he never spoke of it
without great respect and reverence before his children, though
sometimes, to her, he allowed himself an expression that gave her
pain.
She did not doubt, however, that under his occasional contempt for
her mother's religious practices, Jacob remained a good Christian at
heart. Indeed he had never questioned the verities of Christian
faith, or regarded himself as anything but a religious man. But his
plain dealing and scrupulous honesty sprang from heredity and was an
integral part of his nature. He felt no vital prompting to religious
observance in public, and his dislike of crowds kept him from
church-going save on very rare occasions. Margery knew that he
prayed morning and evening, and had indeed reported the fact to her
mother, who distrusted Jacob in this matter. For her son-in-law
himself Mrs. Huxam did not trouble; but she was much concerned in the
salvation of her grandchildren.
Margery wandered down the valley one afternoon when the leaves were
falling and the river making riot after a great rain in mid-moor.
She always liked these autumnal phases and loved to see the glassy
billows of the water roll, as they rolled when she came so near
drowning in her marriage year. She proceeded to meet Jacob, who
would presently return from Brent, whither he had been to despatch
some dogs by train; and now she fell in with Adam Winter, riding home
on a pony over Shipley Bridge. She was glad to see him, counting him
among her first friends, and he welcomed her and alighted.
"Haven't met this longful time," she said and shook hands. This they
never did, but for once the fancy took her and he responded.
"Leaf falling again," replied Adam, "and the autumn rain upon us. A
good year, however--middling hay and corn, good roots and good
grazing."
"I'm glad then. Weather's nothing to us."
"It makes a difference to your feelings," he argued. "How's things?"
"All right. 'One day followeth another,' as the Book says. And
they're all mighty alike at Red House. We don't change half so much
as the river. Auna was rolling down like this when I went over the
waterfall, and you got wet on my account."
"Sixteen year next month; I haven't forgotten."
"It's a long time to remember anything; but I've not forgot neither.
How's my brother, Jeremy, treating you?"
Adam laughed.
"New brooms sweep clean; but he's made a great start, and don't he
look a pretty picture in his trap? Up he comes, punctual as postman,
every Thursday afternoon for the butter and eggs. Long may it last."
"And Jane's suited too--so far. She gets off to Plymouth market on
Friday morning, and has done very clever indeed up to now."
"It was a great start in life for them, and like your husband to give
it. A wonderful good thing to do. Jeremy knows his luck I hope.
But there--Providence cares for the sparrows, though it over-looks
the starlings in a hard winter. Jacob's a good un, Margery."
"So he is then--good as gold."
"And heavy as gold--so a man answered, when I said that very thing
about Bullstone not a month ago. But I withstood him there. He's
not heavy--only a self-centred man. And why not? With a home and a
wife and children and a business, all packed up in the valley so snug
and prosperous, why shouldn't he be self-centred? Why does he want
to be anything else?"
She shook her head.
"It's narrow for a man," she answered, "and I often wish he'd go in
the world more, and welcome the world at Red House for that matter."
"I'm looking at it from his point of view--not yours," replied Adam.
"For the minute I was seeing his side. He's not one for neighbouring
with people, and I say he don't lose much, because his business don't
call for a wide knowledge of humans. He's in clover. He's got a
very fine strain of dogs and the people know it and have to give a
good price for a good article. So he's not like a farmer, who must
make the best he can of open markets and competition. He's all
right. But I quite grant it's not just the life you'd choose,
because you're a sociable creature. You like fresh faces and new
voices and new opinions and new gowns; and if I'd been your husband,
you'd have had most of those things anyway."
"I believe I might. You'd make a very good husband, Adam. A good
husband wasted. But why? It's not too late. Why don't you take a
wife? I should be glad, for it would mean another woman here, and
new ideas."
"For your sake I would then," he said. "But the time's past, if it
ever came. I've got a bachelor nature and plenty to think upon
without a wife."
"Lookers on see most of the game. I'm sure you're a lot cleverer and
more understanding than most married men."
"Not much in the way of cleverness, else I wouldn't be puzzled so
oft."
"The open mind's a very good thing. I'd sooner be puzzled than
always think I knew. Such a lot always think they know; and always
know wrong."
"It's the point of view," he said.
"If my Jacob could look at things from outside, same as you do; and
not always from inside, same as he does, then he'd see a lot clearer
all round life."
"He sees clear enough what he wants to see. He don't waste his time
looking at doubtful or uncertain things. What he does see, he sees;
and so, on his own ground, he can't be beat. I may see a bit farther
and a bit more, but my vision's cloudy. I'm not certain of anything."
"Yes, you are," answered Margery. "You're as certain in religion as
I am, or my mother herself. Now just there, in a vital thing like
that, Jacob's foggy I believe."
"The fog will lift if fog there is. No man can do the things he does
and lack for the Guide, I reckon."
"I'll tell him what you say. Belike it would please him."
"Better not. He's not one to care what I might say. I'm a slight
man in his eyes. He might even think it was cheek my praising him."
"He likes praise really, though he'd never admit it."
"Depends where it comes from. We don't set no store on the praise of
small people and the humble-minded. The praise we ache for be most
times withheld. That is if you are ambitious, like Jacob is. A man
spoke well of in newspapers like him--what should he care for me?"
"He thinks well of you and says it's a fine thing the way you work."
"No, no--think twice, Margery. You're inventing now--to please me.
He's got a very good knowledge of what's worth praise; and a man that
does his own duty without flinching, like your man, isn't going to
admire them who only do the same. I do no more than that, and the
time hasn't come yet when we pat a man on the back for doing his
duty; though perhaps it will be a rare sight in the next generation."
"I wish we could look forward. There's some things I'd dearly like
to know," said Margery.
"Lord! What a lot we should do to fight for ourselves and them we
care about if we could do that," he answered. "If we could look on
ten years even and see how we had changed--how habits had grown up
and fastened on us, how faith in our neighbours had gone, perhaps,
and how, with the years, we'd got more cunning, and harder and more
out for Number One--how we'd set to work to fight ourselves--eh?"
"We ought to live so that we shouldn't be afraid to look on ten
years," she assured him. "Why not so live that your heart will be
bigger and your hope higher and your faith purer in ten years?"
"That's your mother," he answered.
"It's you," she said. "It's you, Adam. You don't need to fear the
years. But I do. I'm different, because I've got children. It's
for them I'd love to look on, so as I might head off the dangers, if
dangers showed!"
"None have less to dread than you in that direction. Wonderful
children--healthy, hearty, sensible. You and Jacob have made a very
good blend for the next generation, and that's something to be
thankful for. If marriage is a lottery--then what are childer? Look
at my family. Who'd have dreamed that my fine mother and my good,
sane father should have had Samuel, and Minnie, now in her grave, and
me--me--only better than Samuel by a hair, and often quite as mad as
him! But there it was. The poison was hid away in my mother's
family, and they never told father till after he was wedded. A very
wicked thing and ought to be criminal--eh? My mother went off her
head after Sam was born and had to be put away for a bit. But she
recovered and never got queer again."
"I'd like to see you on one of your mad days," she said. "But now
it's you telling fibs, not me. Never was a saner man than you; and
if you weren't so sane, you'd be sad. But if you're sad, you don't
show it. When I'm sad, I can't hide my feelings."
"Much pleasanter not to hide 'em, if you've got somebody close at
hand to understand 'em. That's one of the compensations of a good
marriage--to share sorrow and halve the weight of it."
She looked at him whimsically.
"Sounds all right," she said. "Perhaps, after all, there's some
things we married ones know better than you that bide single."
"For certain. Practice knocks the bottom out of a lot of fine
theories."
"The things that you can share with another person don't amount to
much," she told him. "The sorrow that can be shared, and so
lessened, is only small. If one of my children was to die, would it
make it better for me because Jacob took on? No."
A child appeared at this moment and Auna approached from the abode of
Mr. Marydrew. Her father's movements were not often hidden from the
little girl and she was now about to plunge down the woody lane under
Shipley Tor by which he must soon return.
"And how's old Billy, my duck?" asked Margery.
"His cough has gone," said Auna, "and he gave me this brave stick of
barley sugar."
She held the sweetmeat up to her mother.
"I haven't sucked it yet," she said. "I won't suck it till father's
had a bit."
"He'll be along in a minute, my dinky dear, and give you a ride home."
Auna went her way.
"Billy's terrible fond of her, ever since she went in once,
unbeknownst to us, to cheer him up when poor Mercy died. She popped
in like a mouse, and sat beside him, and told him what she'd come
for; and he liked it."
"A good old pattern of man and wise enough to care for childer about
him."
"And who cares for them better than you? A fine father you would
have been, and I tell you again it's not too late."
"I've got Sammy--and a very good child too, when he's not crossed.
But he can be ugly."
She was thoughtful.
"Small blame to you for not marrying," she said, "I chaff you, Adam;
but very well I know why for you didn't."
They relapsed into a lighter mood, and it happened that Winter had
just uttered a sharp comment on one of Margery's speeches, which made
her pretend to be angry. They were both laughing and she had given
him a push backwards, when Jacob came round the corner in his cart
with Auna beside him. He had seen the gesture and Margery perceived
that he must have done so; but Adam's back was turned and he did not
know that Bullstone had appeared.
He was going now, holding his patient horse by the bridle, but
Margery stopped him.
"There's Jacob--don't bolt, else he'll think you've seen him and want
to avoid him," she said.
The man stopped, therefore, till Bullstone's trap was beside them.
Jacob smiled genially and Auna asked her mother to ascend and be
driven home. A few words passed. Margery told how her brother was
shining as huckster, and Adam hoped that Jeremy had now settled down
at last and was on the way to prosperity. Jacob smiled again and
hoped so too, and then Margery climbed into the trap.
She spoke of Adam when they had left him, but her husband paid no
heed to this matter. He was anxious to know if two letters had
reached Red House.
Then he told Auna how good the dogs had been, and she, hardened to
these partings, was glad they had gone bravely.
Jacob appeared to be as usual and the contents of his letters served
to put him in a good temper; yet Margery was sharply conscious of the
hidden watcher that night and, after some hesitation, she decided
upon returning to the subject of Adam Winter.
When they were alone she did so, though in doubt to the last moment
whether it was expedient. The thing she designed to say might merely
serve to remind Jacob of a trifling incident he had already
forgotten; but she knew the contrary was far more likely to be the
case. The significance of the matter would possibly be lessened by a
few words concerning it. She was heartily sorry that the thing had
happened; and yet felt it hard and absurd that such a trifle should
cause her sorrow. Thus she was in an uncertain mood when she did
address him--a mood not indifferent or scornful of the incident,
otherwise she had not returned to it at all; but a mood a little
regretful for herself, and in no sense tinctured with that
repentance, which alone would have made it really desirable to speak.
She waited for some time to see if Jacob himself would allude to
it--a fact that showed how little she really grasped the inner nature
of the man; for past experience might well have taught her that his
silence was assured. He did not mention Winter at all, but spoke
placidly of his children and declared that now the holidays were done
and the boys back at school, he missed Peter in the kennels. He then
proceeded to tell her that he was glad he had decided to keep Barton
Gill in his old, responsible position a little longer. These things
drifted past Margery's ear, and then, just before Jacob finished his
glass of spirits and rose to lock up, she spoke.
"I'm sorry you saw me push Adam this afternoon. It was a silly
thing; but he was poking fun at me, and you know how I'll respond to
a challenge. Just an impulse, because I couldn't think of a sharp
answer."
"Are you sorry you did it, or only sorry I saw you do it?" he asked,
but did not wait for a reply. "No matter--you needn't answer. You
keep so young for your age, though you always say you're old for it."
"I'm sorry. I grant it was foolish. But Winter's an old friend, and
I feel as if we might almost be brother and sister sometimes. He's
good to the children too."
"We'll go to bed," he said.
"Not till you've forgiven me."
"If you know you did a vulgar thing, that's to the good."
She flushed.
"I wish somebody had saved your life," she said, "then you'd find
that you never can feel to that person same as you feel to other
people."
"Christ's blood!" he swore, but hissed it and did not raise his voice
to be heard beyond the room. "When are we going to hear the end of
that?"
She was alarmed, and echoes of a similar incident, now some years
old, came to her memory. She stared at him, then banished her fear,
put her arms round his shoulders and kissed him.
"I'm so sorry, dear. I seem to get so clumsy."
He, too, was sorry, though for something other than he now declared.
He apologised and blamed himself for being a fool; while in his heart
he felt that his folly lay, not in his anger, but the display of it.
The watcher had lifted a corner and peered from its concealment; the
banked fires had broken into a visible flame. He had been betrayed
by the accident of her apology, and shown her something he had no
desire to show her.
Her next word accentuated his error.
"I hoped you would have mentioned it and given me a talking to. I
deserved it."
"Seeing that I've never chidden you for anything on God's earth in my
life, it wasn't very likely I should begin to-night, was it?"
"I might be happier if you did chide me. I dare say I do many things
you hate; if you told me so, I wouldn't do them again."
"You may be right; but it's contrary to my nature to play
schoolmaster. Where I don't like a thing and can change it myself, I
do; but where others are concerned, if it's not my place to order, I
don't order."
"I know; but if you'd order oftener, or express an opinion as you
have to-night, we might all be quicker to do your will."
"Women like tyrants, it's said," he replied. "But I'm not built that
way, and if wit and love can't see to please without being
ordered--so much the worse. Forget it; forget it."
"No," she answered. "I'll take very good care not to forget it,
Jacob."
"So you think; but true memory comes from the heart, not the head."
He was unusually silent for many days, as she knew he would be. Then
he grew cheerful again and spoke of Shipley and the Winters in his
customary, indifferent fashion.